Highest Paying List

Even a niche site with a low visitor level can profit from Google AdSense. With a little restructuring to include Google Adsense in a tasteful and harmonious way, your niche, hobby or enthusiast site can not only pay its way but generate a small income as well, and it can do this without losing its identity.

A few things this article is Not about:

Getting rich quick. (if only!)

Trash sites with little or no content festooned with adverts and affiliate schemes.

Sites with thousands of hits per day/hour/minute.

And a few things this article definitely IS about:

Getting your enthusiast site to pay its way, without looking tacky.

Possibly generating a small additional income.

Using Google Adsense, to refine and enhance your site and its message.

So, you have registered a domain and bought some hosting. Or maybe you have utilized some free space. Either way, you have spent time proudly crafting your site to display your interests/enthusiasm. Now, maybe you have a small regular clientèle or maybe a diverse set of random visitors. Either way you have a message and you want to get it across. You have got this far and hey, its fun, its creative and its nice having people visit your creation and read your views/opinions or factual presentation.

But it would also be really nice to be able to recoup at least some of that initial investment in time and money, and it would be even better if your baby could provide a few beers as well!

Most enthusiast site owners get nervous at this point. Do you really want to corrupt your site with a garish mess of affiliate adverts and pay-per-click adverts? After all, we have all seen perfectly good sites ruined by an over eagerness to gain an income.

Lets face it your site is there because you care about the subject of your site. The last thing you want is it to turn into a tacky mess of irrelevant ads which will diminish your message and degrade your standing within the subject of your site.

But it is possible to implement PPC without ruining your site. I reckon that with restraint and care, a good quality site can include PPC adverts without losing its dignity or message. I have a few simple rules I follow and I think the ads I attract to my sites actually improve the content by adding related links my visitors appreciate.

Here are my rules

1. No advert block should be "in your face". If the user has to scroll to start reading the real information on your site, or if the ad blocks are so prominent they break up the natural flow of your text/images then that is bad. I ensure only one ad block appears above the fold, either as a top of page banner or as a block bottom right of the displayed page. I find it is nice to have the ad block opposite an image.
2. Blend your adverts in. Make them have a low profile. No borders or special fonts. Use the same font colours as used on your site.
3. I do not use picture ads. I find them difficult and distracting. In my opinion they are too prominent and detract from the information on the site.
4. Google allows three Adsense advert blocks per page but I use a maximum of two. I make use of the Google channels tool to give each ad block its own identity.
5. The really important page to get adverts on is your landing page. I find most of my advert clicks come from the main page. Other pages are less important. So if you want to just try it out you only need to redesign one page.

Google is always very protective about how much it pays per click and how much individual sites can gain. Discussing it too graphically can get you barred!. Google pay up when you pass the $100 mark and this can be accumulated over a number of months, so even if your niche site only gets occasional clicks, it all mounts up eventually.

After all, even $100 a year would cover most hobby/enthusiast hosting fees, although, of course you may well to able to earn much more than this. The amount of effort modifying just a single page and setting up the Google Adsense account to try it out is really minimal compared to what you may eventually get back and is well worth the effort.

The critical thing is not to lose the dignity of your site. I think you can include Google Adsense without losing your message, and I know that niche sites can more than pay their way with Google Adsense